You are sending a link to...
Pseudsday Tuesday
Spare a thought for Rachel Corrie. If you can spare a thought from watching paint dry. Here is a "poem" by Hilda Silverman:
Whatever words might have been adequate
have become a high fluting cry
like the keening whit-tu-tu
of the unseen bird outside
my window. All day I have been trying
to break free from the bulldozer’s
blade, piled earth, steel treads fracturing
skull and chest, that moment of resistance
and protest, stilled frame reverberating
beyond the moment, like the kid
in Tiananmen Square before the tank.
Her bright orange jacket
and megaphone.
Her kind and tired eyes.
All day I have been pierced
by the high note of helplessness,
the ragged beat of despair.
Shrouded body with its blur of blood.
The quiet hands of mourners
bearing her, flag-sheathed, across the town.
Bla bla bla ....
Whatever words we have are useless
against this cruel weight. The bird’s cry
keens from every crack in the edifice
of history. Before she died, Rachel Corrie wrote
of the privilege granted her, an outsider,
but denied to those under occupation.
"I have a home.
I am allowed to go see the ocean."
E. J. Throbb, aged 17¾, wrote a shorter poem:
So farewell, then, Rachel
Corrie. Volenti
Non fit injuria. That was a
Catch phrase she never knew.
I never knew Rachel
Corrie. But I knew her
Flatmate